


once a forest

by antagonists



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 06:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10611147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists
Summary: Robin merely smiles, offers a flute of deep, rich champagne. When he drinks, Chrom cannot look away from his throat. “Perhaps I am not the same Robin you met before. Perhaps you are not the same Chrom whom I’ve met last.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> fuck u waen
> 
> immortal/time traveler au idk

* * *

 

 

 

He finds Robin asleep beneath a tree, dappled with the swaying shadows of spring eaves and golden daylight.

 

“One would think,” he says amusedly, prodding at Robin’s cheek, “that you would be the one to find me, given I’m always the one landing in unknown times.”

 

“Hm,” Robin responds sleepily. It is another moment before he thinks to open his eyes; he doesn’t always sleep, but when he does, he does so very soundly. In a more trying, desperate time, it would be folly to nap in a place like this. As things are, though, Chrom decides against mentioning it.

 

The meadows are brilliantly green. They stretch so far, an emerald eternity trying to meet the ends of the skies. This place had been the bustling marketplace, once; Chrom wonders where he is now. There are no ruins to indicate a fallen city, so perhaps he is in the past? Or a very, very distant future?

 

“Ah, Chrom.” Awake, or at least enough to hold conversation, Robin draws his attention back. “Nice meeting you here.”

 

“This place is beautiful,” Chrom says. “Very… peaceful. Perfect napping grounds for you; better than the last place I found you sleeping, in any case.”

 

Robin rolls his eyes. “The stables were a one-time occurrence, I assure you. I wasn’t able to rid of the smell for _days_.”

 

“Where am I?” he asks. “There used to be a marketplace here, full of goldsmiths and jewelers from the south. You’d complain about the noise at night, saying they’d distract you from your studies.”

 

“No such thing. No one’s thought of settling down yet; the nearest village is a two day walk from here,” Robin replies patiently. “You must have come from the future.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“I imagine it’s confusing to see completely different realities from whence you came.” Carefully, Robin adjusts the ribbon in his book, laying its edge evenly against the seams. “Whether you travel ahead, or backwards.”

 

“You are there no matter where I go,” Chrom grins. “I am not afraid of anything.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sometimes, when he falls into the future, he is disoriented by the clear advancement of society, by the ruinous happenings that have destroyed it, or the emptiness that comes with a world not yet made. He has never chanced upon the same timeline before. Things are confusing enough as is.

 

He has tried keeping a journal of his travels before, just to see if he could make heads or tails of the years he’d jump into, trying to lace the bits of his spotty journey together with his illegible scrawl. Nothing ever makes sense, though, and he’s been a terrible record-keeper ever since he was a boy. Bad at paying attention to history lessons, yearning instead for the ache of tired muscles and a weapon in his hand—well, in his past, at least. Before he’d found himself waking up one day in a world centuries previous.

 

No matter the jump, the gap in time has always been infinitely large. He has skipped across entire kings’ reigns, wound up back in pasts where there hadn’t been kings, merely forests and dragons and the earth. But Robin is still there. He is always there.

 

He visits the tree from their many, many meetings. Surprisingly, even over the centuries, it grows undeterred, untouched. There is something sacred in its branches and in the water that swills calmly at the massive roots, hinting at deeper, darker secrets. It is Robin’s home, though sometimes the little cottage is swallowed up by the rich wood. In later years, the home will be so far into the sky that he wonders if Robin can touch the clouds.

 

Now, the waters rise high. If he were to jump into the cool, still blue, he doesn’t know how long it would take to sink to the bottom.

 

He climbs. Somewhere, high in the branches, Robin is waiting for him.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When he pulls himself onto a thick bough, hands raw from clambering halfway up the skies, Robin gives him a strange look. He’s reading as he usually is, a cup of tea on a platter next to him, set on the flat bridge leading to his rickety cabin. It’s daylight out; the sun is a gentle scattering of soft golds over the pages as he turns them.

 

“Who are you?” he asks calmly, closing his book.

 

“I’m Chrom? Who else would I be,” He blinks slowly, slightly afraid. “…Robin?”

 

After another moment of confusion, Robin’s expression melts into a warm smile, welcoming and familiar.

 

“I jest, my dear Chrom. Of course I remember you.”

 

Chrom pauses all the same. He’d known that he’s but a small tally on the list of people whom Robin has seen, has met, even befriended and lost. Yet now that the possibility of being _forgotten_ presents itself, he grows solemn and uneasy. Flitting about time probably doesn’t do much to leave him as a single, solid impression over a lifetime. Robin apologizes for his poor choice in humor, running a hand through Chrom’s hair.

 

“No one else dresses in that outlandish garb as you do,” Robin reassures. “Except maybe your daughter.”

 

“I have a daughter?” Chrom asks. They walk over the humble bridge. He fears that it may break beneath their combined weight, but it holds with no more than a sigh. The cabin is cool and dark, tranquil in a way that would be deeply unsettling if he were here alone. Distantly, he wonders how Robin could bear it.

 

“In a time different from this one,” Robin says, tilting his head. “She has not seen you for a very, very long time; you may as well be a ghost, nothing but a memory she longs to relive.”

 

“But I’m _here_.”

 

“Many of you have lived, though all in separate planes of existence. Have you ever wondered why the world seemed as though you’d never left it?”

 

“So what you’re saying,” Chrom pauses, “is that there are multiple copies of myself at this very instant.”

 

Robin merely smiles, offers a flute of deep, rich champagne. When he drinks, Chrom cannot look away from his throat. “Perhaps I am not the same Robin you met before. Perhaps _you_ are not the same Chrom whom I’ve met last.”

 

“This is all very confusing—the idea of having so many copies of myself.”

 

“Not copies, Chrom. You are them, and they are all you, just in different worlds.”

 

Chrom is quiet for a moment, tracing the glass with one finger. “Am I… the same? All of the Me's that you’ve met.”

 

“You’re rather stubborn, you know.” Robin’s smile is slow and delicate—a sweet edge like honey, unyielding keenness like the eye of a deity. “Always so passionate, so driven. Time cannot change you.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

This Robin looks exhausted, simply sits by Chrom as though he hasn’t the mind to run and maintain all those engaging conversations he usually does. He rubs at his face tiredly when asked if there’s anything wrong, if there’s anything Chrom can do to help.

 

“You do not see how the world changes,” Robin says slowly, stirring his tea with the same silver spoon Chrom had gifted him so long ago. “Merely the end results. It is as though you are stepping into an entirely different world, so new and so fascinating.”

 

“You have lived long,” Chrom replies, leans closer to rest a palm atop Robin’s bony knee, “and you will continue to live on. You must be very tired.”

 

Robin tilts his head back, neck exposed to the firelight. The books around him hold so much history—the rise and fall of civilizations—and he has lived through them all. Chrom himself feels rather small, naive, almost, in the knowledge that he simply takes from the world what he sees fit while his friend has no such choice. He inhales deeply when Robin leans in to press his forehead into Chrom’s shoulder, lethargic.

 

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Robin says quietly, as if he can read Chrom’s thoughts. “Please, just for a little while.”

 

He sips at the tea as they sit in silence. It is herbal and bitter, yet does nothing to untwist the unease in his gut. When he wakes up the following morning with Robin in his arms, sunrise shining through the leaves, birdsong a shrill melody in his ears, he still feels oddly afraid.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Ah, you’ve come to me again,” Robin smiles, but he is not Robin. “So good at coming back to me, aren’t you? So sweet, so darling to me.”

 

“You’re not Robin,” Chrom says warily.

 

“I am your Robin,” Robin says. “You are my Chrom. Time does not change us.”

 

 _Time changes you_ , he thinks. The hair is the same, the way Robin runs his fingers over faded ink and wood is the same. His eyes, though, are harrowed, reminiscent of an old battleground’s stagnant peace. The tree is tall, a towering menace that reaches so far into the skies Chrom can scarce see where it ends, and its bark is brittle, pale. The branches are barren, like sharp white knives plunged deep into the night sky. If Chrom were to take a careless step, perhaps it would crumble beneath his very feet.

 

“Stay,” Robin implores him. It is the first time he has asked this of Chrom.

 

He cannot bear to see Robin this way. He flees.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Chrom sits by the small sprout, a feeble green nestled into ash darker than pitch. The skies are heavy with clouds, thick with the smell of rain, and—he is so—

 

cold.

 

He waits for Robin, and waits.

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> insp: combination of [this post](http://slavicinferno.tumblr.com/post/35274169105) and [nerding out](http://maplestory.wikia.com/wiki/Henesys_Ruins)


End file.
